Last week, when the rain was pouring down, I decided to do something I haven’t done in ages, curl up with a good book. The only problem was that I was too lazy to go down to the library and check one out.
“Why don’t you read this,” my daughter suggested, handing me a copy of Anton Chekhov’s The Kiss.
“What’s it about?” I asked, thumbing through the pages.
“It’s one of his short stories,” she explained, “and it’s about this poor little man who accidentally gets kissed by a woman he never sees again. It’s kind of sad, but I really liked it. Give it a try.”
The Kiss was published way back in 1887 and its hero is a young army officer named Ryabovich (which means pock-marked or pitted complexion in Russian). Not only is Ryabovich unattractive to women, he is also painfully shy and not very clever.
To make a short story short, Ryabovich’s brigade stops for one night in a small village and he (along with his fellow officers) is invited by a retired general to take tea at a fancy estate not far from the village. Being embarrassingly timid and fully conscious of his own insignificance, Ryabovich takes no part in the general merriment and eventually wanders off on his own. He spends some time in a billiards-room, declines an invitation to play a game, and begins to make his way back to the ballroom. He can hear all the laughter and other party noise off in the distance and is reminded that, “Not once in his life has he danced or put his arm around an attractive young woman’s waist. Not once has he loved.”
Adrift in his thoughts, Ryabovich gets lost in the huge house and stumbles into a room which is quiet and very dark. As his eyes struggle to get adjusted to the lack of light, he is astonished to hear hurried footsteps, the rustle of a dress and a breathless female voice whispering, “At last.” Then, before he knows what is happening to him, “Two soft, sweet-smelling arms encircle his neck, a burning cheek is pressed against his, and there is the sound of a kiss.”
For the first time in his life, Ryabovich has been kissed. Evidently a young lady who had set up a rendezvous with a lover had by mistake kissed the wrong man in the dark. She is horrified to discover the truth and hurries out of the room. Ryabovich, on the other hand, has had his entire being aroused. There is finally something beautiful and loving in his otherwise very uneventful life.
“How far have you gotten,” my daughter asked as she plopped down beside me on the couch.
“Ryabovich just got kissed,” I said.
“Well, you better stop right there,” she said. “The rest is just too sad.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He never finds out who the girl was, and his life becomes hopeless and full of despair again.”
“But maybe that’s not as tragic as you think?” I suggested.
“Are you kidding?” she asked, grabbing the book. “Just listen to this.”
“What are you doing?” I asked as she quickly located a paragraph she had underlined near the end of the story.
“And the whole world, the whole of life,” she read, “struck Ryabovich as a meaningless, futile joke. As he turned his eyes from the water to the sky, he remembered how fate had accidentally caressed him, in the guise of an unknown woman. He recalled the dreams and visions of that summer and his life seemed terribly empty, miserable, and colorless.”
As my daughter read on, my mind began to wander, and I found myself recalling a few of the more meaningful kisses in my life. “You’re not even listening to me,” my daughter suddenly said, poking me.
“Yes, I am,” I lied, but I was really recalling a little poem by Leigh Hunt which Ryabovich would have understood:
Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair in which she sat,
Time you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’ed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.